André Leon Talley Instagram – Manolo Blahik and yours truly in Manhattan, somewhere. We are like brothers and have always been.
Manolo is the most elegant man I know. He could have been an interior architect, a set designer, as well as shoe king. He has designed beautiful wrought iron furniture, that he cast in his beautiful town, Bath, England.
Manolo has a marvelous house on the Crescent in the historical city of Bath. We used to spend glorious weekends in his Luchino Visconti rooms, he decorated on his own, with roaring fires watching Visconti films before there were cable boxes. He had all Visconti and Bertolucci films in his library. My favorite pastime, was to walk into town to the bookstore and come home, and watch Manolo bake a cake in his AGA oven. The house had all the style of those great English homes you see where cozy means really cozy, yet it is grand. Oh, did we laugh, just the two of us. My best country house weekends were spent with Manolo in the Eighties, just the two of us.
I once went to London and spent an entire week, reading to him, the entire works of Camille Paglia: Sexual Personae and Sex, Art, and American culture. Out Loud. The main purpose of my trip was to sit by his bed, every day from eleven a.m. to four p.m. reading out loud, in a clinic where he was convalescing after surgery. We had the best time, as he lay in bed and I sat there, every day having very little food and reading out loud from Paglia’s great essays. I met Bianca Jagger through him, she has all his great designs from decades in storage. Manolo Blahnik’s suits from Anderson and Sheppard are the most dandy, pure dandy suits ever ordered. These are moments in time, timeless, precious and always there. #vogue #thechiffontrenches #manoloblahnik | Posted on 21/Feb/2021 03:43:25
